


Ego City Sins

by StealthLesbian



Category: Original Work
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-15
Updated: 2017-10-15
Packaged: 2019-01-17 19:04:53
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,450
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12372093
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StealthLesbian/pseuds/StealthLesbian
Summary: Skylark Freefall, hilarious name aside is a rather serious faced detective for the Haven City police department. However, instead of collecting clues and making guesswork fit into boxes, the largest part of her job involves interviewing the deceased. After one of the workers in the flying cities only power plant turns up dead, Sky's left to suss out the who-dun it. Of course, that would have been a lot easier if the city itself weren't suddenly under going a literal float of chaotic spirits determined to cause as much trouble for the living as possible. With no one else euipt to handle the situation, Sky must go on a spirit wrangling adventure that may or may not leave the natural order of the universe hanging in the balance.





	Ego City Sins

**Author's Note:**

> So this is an experiment I've been working on for awhile. It's not done yet and the inspirations for it are rather thinly veiled. I do appreciate any form of feedback though.

Another day, another persons death, which if you stopped to think about it, was a depressing statistic. Well unless you happen to be in the business of dead people, morticians, I find, very rarely complain about the death rates. Fortunately, I suppose, my business is also death, nothing such as an undertaking as Undertaking, however. Nor so droll as playing with corpses, no my job is much more...Interviewing the previous inhabitants of said corpses. Well, that's not the whole of it, but its the largest, least boring part. The rest of it comes down to doing routine police work and doing something akin to praying all the dots fall into place. 

I never liked praying, it was right next to waiting in the category of mostly useless things that normal people do a lot of to feel self-important and self-importance is further down that list. I adjusted my glasses, the dark shades covering completely white eyes and more importantly helping me see, in a very sort of monochromatic flat sort of way. Nothing compared to actual sight, but it helped at least in so much with grabbing pesky hands that jackasses always waved in front of a blind person's face.

I was standing in front of the old power station, built on the coast. Because you didn't need river turbines when you had Golem's to pump the water and run the tread mill's, it was an old building, despite its near new condition and functioning status, designed in that sort of Neo-Japanese meets old Gothic architecture that the lady of the city was so fond of. Place couldn't decide if it wanted to be a temple or a castle, it might maybe some day, after years of fervent indecision make up it mind. But I didn't expect, even with a thousand reincarnations beyond this one, I would ever see it. I marched stiffly up to the guard at the door, who was waiting for the police response unit and looked sorely disappointed when he saw only me, well me and Muggy...Mugsly Manford that was, or Officer Manford, as he preferred. 

Having just graduated from the academy, he wanted to take full advantage of his new title, before someone decided to see if his diploma was bullet proof most likely. I couldn't decide if his parents had been dimwitted or fond of locker shaped sons. Doting, if confused, he always said, either way it was unfair to pick on him and his stick thin frame and peach fuzzed chin. He was a sweet kid, heart of gold him, fingers of lead, he was a wonderful human being, as human beings went, but he was clumsy as an ox on unicycle, juggling bowling balls. 

The guard grunted and, I really couldn't make fun of Muggy. Myself, not managing to look very official or the slightest bit intimidating, not for lack of cranky faced trying. But the turned down frown, only seemed to accentuate a short, stocky frame and black purple hair that stuck up in every direction but sane on a good day and gave up for lent when it too was being fussy. I tired my best to look daunting and only ever managed very put upon hedge hog. I flipped open my badge and let the doorman ponder it over. He eye'd me and then the town seal on the chaoticly arranged piece of metal that glinted in muted sapphire. 

I couldn't blame him, really, the way I looked and poor Muggy fumbling for his own badge and dropping it behind me. Live long enough with a name like Skylark Freefall and you'll soon begin to suspect that someone just made it up too. If you think about it, though, really hard. Someone just made up all names, once upon a time, but there it was and that was it. The man at the door just nodded.

“Right.” He said after a moment. “The Dead Detective from the Department.”

“Yes and I do so love alliteration.” He snickered, pleased with himself, as they all do and all are. Muggy managed to get his badge off the ground just as I was being led inside and scrambled after me. 

It was immaculate on the inside, clean power station and because of the mostly clay workers, driving all of the dangerous bits, it was essentially one of the best jobs in the city. The positions were so enviable that it was the sort of job one could only get if the previous title holder became deceased. On the slightly less gloomy side of the job description however, it also meant that one was guaranteed a job, even if one was only slightly less dead than the incumbent before them. Speaking of dead people, I was after all here to have a very lively chat with one. I turned to Muggy and cleared my throat, one of the gray jump suited workers shuffled over. 

“Can you find the lad a chair?” He nodded, shuffled off and came back a few minutes latter with one of those metal folding chairs. 

Muggy kicks it into place and sits down, he knows what's up, been through this before. Helluva breaking in really, pairing him with me, me and my job, what I do, the simple yet sizable amount of trust and acceptance this takes, but he has the gift, the ability to work with magic. No true talent for it, but allows for more wiggle room than your average human. 

That's really why he was here, I grinned at him, trying to be playful, he looked nervous, its another thing I don't hold against him. I shouldn't even be subject to most of the things floating around my brain, let alone anyone else. Without further flourishing I shove two fingers, index and middle against his temple. 

My fingers come away with a thin blue strand of fabric, with I in turn push to my own head, the world goes completely dark for a second as I shut my eyes and pull off the glasses. I open them, full and perfect vision afford to me now. I smiled with what I hoped was genuine affection, though on my face it probably looked more like 'I promise to kill you last when I eventually snap,' as I slipped the glasses onto his face. He should at least have something, after all he was loaning me his eyes essentially.

“Here, I'll be right back, you have a breather, maybe free snack and coffee. All I need to do is confirm this was an accident and help the poor departed along. Then I can call in the team to clean up the mess and you can be along having a relaxing evening with Missus Muggy.” He rolled his eyes and scowled at me but it wasn't a really mean expression, he wasn't mad and he also couldn't pull off intimidating if he tried. He has a dog though and I know it. I turned, blinking, the place was big and clean. The jump suited chair delivery man was standing off to the side, I stuck out my hand and introduced myself, his name was Wade and he gave me the run down as he led me to the crime scene.

The noise of the place, droning machines, clicking, clanking and ratcheting was toning itself down as I  
walked. My mind and body were already adjusting to, if only temporarily having the ability to truly see again. The smell of heat, sweat and machinery got less oppressive as I looked around, the building was well lit, which was no surprise being the power company and all, really. There were ladders and those metal enclosed spiral stair cases, leading to places I couldn't be bothered to fathom. 

All in all it was very cramped feeling space, leaving one with the impression that they ought to hunch slightly and pull their shoulders in to get by unscathed, even someone as short and slim as myself. I followed Jimmy Jumpsuit, down a bendy hallway that felt as if it was breathing down my neck. Old building, words, thoughts, people have power. That kind stuff collects over years and decades and eventually what you end up with is a fussy place of work. Essentially a living building, something with as much thought and feeling as it's occupants, though with much less avenues with which to express those thoughts and feelings.

We marched slowly and silently down a one of those metal stair cases at the end of the cramped hall, I rounded the last turn and came down the last few stairs as I saw the body. Typical splayed out pose, head cracked on the floor, torso slightly flat. People get scared halfway through when they jump, start to flail, look like cartoons by the time they hit. Its not particularly pretty, or funny, but the mind rationalizes death in all sorts of odd ways, even mine. So to avoid having itself and the rest of you going bloody spare every time you're sometime place up high, for the fear that you to might end up a loonytoon on the pavement below, it laughs at the sight. 

Because its just one thing, that happened to that poor unfortunate bastard, not you. Today's poor unfortunate bastard, was named Old Man Jenkins, oh I'm sure that wasn't always his name, there was probably a time, somewhere in his prime, when he was just Jenkins. But age, impressions and memory are also funny little ticks of the brain. Wade gestured over toward one of the machines.

“Spirits been hanging around back there....He fell, end of story, convinced he was pushed though and we can't get 'im to leave. Is why we called you.” He mumbled slowly and quietly, probably so as not to be overheard by Old Man Jenkins, who might object to his presence being objected to. 

The man was dead, and he did have some right to hang about his 'final resting place' at least that was until someone like me came along to show him off to his true final accounting. You see, me, I'm not the auditor, not really, I'm just the doorman, the bridge between the worlds and just one of many doormen really. No that job falls to, those poor souls, quite literally I might add, who had most likely previously failed their own moments of ultimate introspection. 

Bah the Celestial Bureaucracy, you'd think that anything involved in the celestial realm wouldn't be so bogged down. But the Bureaucracy part weighed heavily on the death department and soaked it in enough metaphysical red tape to choke a god into submission. I stepped forward and cleared my throat, looking about. 

“Mr Jenkins?” Politeness is a key in my line of work, grumpy spirits are so often more of a hassle than they are worth. The Old Spook came floating up, and man was he ever old, well dead now, old before. Specters keep no physical aliments of their former lives, but they do tend to resemble how they felt and apparently Jenkins had been born old, he stood hunched, even though he didn't have to, nobly knees, thin pointy elbows and crocked nose to go along with his bent back. A shock of tuffy gray hair just strewn about his head. 

“Aye, an' I suspect you're the...Whatcha call it? Ghost Cop?” He huffed, his visage shifting in the color spectrum a touch. 

“Ethereal Gendarme.” I commented, dryly, strong words yes and a fancy title. But it's better than ghost cop and I wasn't kidding about the doorman thing, it really is our job to show the spirits out. Even if they don't want to be shown, and our job to make sure they get through door, even if they don't want to go. Hence the strong arm, because it keeps the ever fragile balance of the universe. Dead Jenkins seemed to just shake his head and huff again, completely arbitrary as he didn't actually breath anymore. But the soul remember these things, for a time. Spend too much time as ghost, stuck here among the mocking stinking mortals and sanity starts to become a really quaint concept.

“Doesn't really matter the titles now, does it? You're here to send me off inta the great beyond.” Say's the old man who got it wrong. 

“Something like that, I would at least first like to know how you came to this fate.” I leaned on the less hazardous machines, pulling out my note pad, to take details, final requests and like. I watched the Old Man dance slightly, spirit wobbling as he chuckled.

“What, not on any O' yer lists was I? You think because I'm old, I deserve to be dead? No, I didn't fall, copper. But that's what you wanta think, would be easy fer you. No I was pushed I tell you.” I blinked, tilting my head, he might well be mad, but he had a point that was the easy way too go about it. Spirits also didn't generally go mad this fast, souls usually clung to their lost humanity for sometimes remarkable amounts of time. All depending on their focus and motivation of course, a father taken too soon from a child far too young. For instance, might find the gumption to stick around as sane as the day he died for some twenty years if he found a way to avoid people like me and get away with it.

So to at least humor the crotchety sprite, that his passing might be more comfortable I put my note book away, pushed away from the noisy contraption and took a closer look about his body. He was twisted up, legs sticking out at the wrong angles, he made a really artistic splat. It wasn't in the frantic last minute panic sort of way that would indicate an accident, or a jumper changing their mind, though. This was, almost less peaceful than that, almost at the wrong angle to, to much splat now I looked closer. I looked up, blinking into the uncomfortable light. There was definitely a guard rail there though and it wasn't broken.

“Stay.” I said to the entity in current in residence as I proceeded upstairs two at a time.

“I dannea appreciate the humor, young lady.” He called. He couldn't have left on his own if he wanted to, most spirits are basically bound to the place they died. It takes exceptional will and strength to leave one's place of death after it, without the help of someone like me. Most ghosts didn't have it in them.

“Nobody does, though you should, its the last you're bound to get for awhile.” I threw over my shoulder, the land of the dead was a dreadfully dull place. Kind of like a waiting room in a tax office. 

Wade made a motion as if to follow me, but I waved him off. I needed him to stay and watch the scene, it wasn't exactly short order to bound up eight flights of stairs. Being honest when I got to the top I needed a moment, young body, old soul and the soul remember these things, things like insisting it isn't as young or as in shape as it should be. After a moments wheezing and panting I straightened and wandered over to the guard rail. I attempting to lean over it, but on me it was at a touch or so under mid height. 

I wasn't tall at all but Jenkins in his old age was less so than I and someone his size would have had to work to slip over accidentally. I shook it, tested my strength against it's own. It barely budged and when it did the whole catwalk rocked. Nope, sturdy, alright then. Murder it was. Having made up my mind I walked back down at a much more leisurely pace, Wade looked up at me, from where he was cowering.

“I need you to secure this area, I'll be calling the Watchmen in, I suspect it is indeed a murder.” Oh, I realized, fear of ghosts, or perhaps just Jenkins I myself wouldn't blame him, Jenkins for his part was looking as grumpy as ever. I waved him over.

“Mr Jenkins, I will be investigating you're death and as it is murder, it is standard procedure to take you're statement and keep you in holding until which time the case is either solved or deemed unsolvable.” Manner of death, of course had an effect on both the murdered party and the murderer, something that must if at all possible be tabulated and reported. 

Like I said, bunch of stuffed shirts over on the other side, but it had a lot to do with where one's soul ended up on the great wheel and into the next life. Being murdered could actually make up for any number of lesser sins, the time you would have, had left being taken into account and all. Granted, I suspect that if such things were greater knowledge I'd be doing this until I eventually ran out of lives, if that was possible. 

After taking Jenkins, first name Albert's statement. I lit an incense and snapped my fingers, holding the stick out and writing in the air with the smoke, a purple portal appeared and cautiously the ghost stepped through, but this door, instead of leading to the afterlife led into the Amulet around my neck, he vanish withed a blink and the blue stone on the necklace glowed. Spiritual limbo, I would carry around and care for his immortal essence until all 'worldly affairs' I.E. his murder was sorted and I could shuffle him off properly. 

With that I turned and headed back toward the front of the building, I found Muggy sitting in the chair, reading a book, half a doughnut in his mouth. He looked up at me quizzically to which I shrugged. “I know I promised you an early night. But I suspect this is going to take a while.” 

“Ehh, its my job anyway.” He said with a laugh. “I'll call the forensic techs.”

He took out his phone, but before he could dial, I put my hand to my own head and pulled out a wispy blue strand, my own eyes going black. Muggy helped me find his temple again. “You'll need this back I think. Sorry to cut the time limit so close.” 

He just set my glasses back on my face, utter blackness turning back into monochrome flat features. It was something and Muggy didn't seem to bothered by the running close to the time limit, unwisely so maybe as I could get use to seeing again. Bit wouldn't be permanent and we both knew it, his sight would burn out in my eyes and render him completely blind for his trouble..I couldn't do that to him, maybe he knew that. Either way I let him make his phone call and perched myself on the chair.

 

“It's a bit ironic, isn't it?” I started, turning as the side of Muggy's face came into my dim gray view. I'd dozed off in the car on the ride back to the station, jostled awake by the sound of his voice. “Huh?”

“I was saying.” He repeated slowly. “It's a bit ironic, a man lives his whole life in a flying city and manages, just to die falling over a rail from seven stories up.” 

I shifted in the seat, feet kicked up on the dash and stretched. “Was pushed, most likely.” 

I reminded him, just a tad grumpily. It's rare I sleep well and while I don't particularly mind being woken up to ruminate over my partner's musings. Sometimes he says stupid things, and nobody can fault me being cranky woken up to hear stupid things. But he's only human entirely, except for that spark of innate magical receptiveness and he's young yet. Fresh out of the academy, so he was idealistic yet and hopeful. I didn't wish any change to him, but that sort of nature is bound to take a battering in this world of ours. I hoped to at least give him some comfort over it, but I wasn't holding my breath about any notion of protecting him from it. I didn't do that anymore. Such roads of good intentions, irrevocably went the way they all go.

I shifted, looking out the window and away from his face as he continued on. “But still, bit of a cruel fate isn't it?”

I shrugged, watching the expanse of the city roll past me. I knew from those times of having proper vision that it was reds, whites and golds. All sleek invitingly curved sky scrapers, shooting above squat little buildings with slanted red roofs. The thing was built fifteen thousand feet up, with an Asian aesthetic flare, even though all sorts lived here. The city itself was held up by some baffling combination of magic and artifice, part quantum physics and part spells so vast I couldn't begin to fathom them. Like most people, I actually just trusted that it all worked and didn't bother to find out how, I was entitled I felt at this point not have to understand everything. The thing was old and still futuristic, the building themselves sometimes alive through years and years of collected physic and kinetic energy. Like the power plant for instance. 

“It'll all get accounted for, manner of death that is. When I get this solved and finally send him off properly.” Though I'm sure the irony of it would be lost. People tended to put far to much stock in things like fate, in the 'Grand Plan.' When you died, no matter how or where, you were meant to die, that then and that way. It was just suppose to happen because as the Monotheists believed, their god had a plan for every single one of them, right down to death, so everything that happened was all part of the 'Grand Plan'. The truth was a lot less comforting than that. There was no 'Grand Plan,' it was more like a 'Grand Design,' not even that but really just a shaky framework at best. It didn't matter when you died or even really how to an extent. Just that you were collected and accounted for when you did.

There was no real plan, things just happened, what the hell? No god had the power or want to watch and plan the 'fate' of every living being. Not even those of us with back stage passes to the entire cosmic affair had much of a choice in when and where our lives and deaths happened. Thing was, so long as the universe kept chugging along smoothly, all the celestial beings in their place, doing their jobs. No one except those of us living it were much concerned with the day to day life. Well unless you worked in the spiritual accounts department and even then you just recorded events, but didn't bother changing or guiding them in any way.

“I kinda forgot about that.” He scratched his hair as I waited for him to finish his train of thought, which at this point must have been running so late, that were I lucky, he might well finish within this lifetime. “That you've been through it. Had multiple lives, gone through the great wheel....How many times have you been brought back?”

“Well, I can see why you'd forget such a distinct trait of my class. You might also be pleased to know, that everyone gets multiple lives. It's just us Vanguards that remember them distinctly as different and separate lives is all.” I turned, crossing my arms over my chest as he took a sharp turn absent mindedly, bring us to our highway exit. I grunted and affected what I hoped was a truly grumpy look, not just a looked that penguins tried and failed to pass off as grumpy.

He seemed to be waiting for me to continue and damn him and his big eyes and honest heart felt curiosity. “Nine, I've had nine lives, so far and yes before you say anything, like a cat. Not that this is bound to be my last, but you have to understand most of those lives took place when Died in Childbirth was a ripe old age. Come to think of it, I've done that before. So all told, my soul, this thing that continues, picks up quirks and traditions that carry for mysterious reasons from life to life is 300 years old. Give or take.”

He sucked his teeth quietly and I could feel it rummaging around his brain, clanking loudly off his skull and struggling to come out. The big question, the one they all asked, it was inevitable when this line of thinking started, sure as the tide and most of the time just as devastating if it was in that kind of mood.

“What's it like?” He uttered finally, in a soft voice as he cast his attention back to the road as not run us off it. If only the crab races were as predictable as the human that rigged them. I'd be rich enough to spend a life time retired.

“I can't answer that...I'm sorry.” I added, after a moment's hesitation, being as he might be one of the only people I'd have answered it for, if I could. “Before you ask, no, its not as if there's any sort of law against it. I just don't remember, all the lives, all the memories. The deaths, the births, they're, there. But its not like a filling cabinet system, I can't just call them up. Even so, in between all of those deaths and births? Nothing, its just blank space.”

We pulled up to the station not long after that, I uncurled and got out. As I walked up the building, the stony silence of the early evening parking lot was interrupted by all manners of clanking, clunking and a general rumble from the building itself. As the station's great double doors swung open with a clatter and the area began experiencing what I can only describe as a mass exodus of inanimate objects. A constables uniform was leading the revolt-didn't really feel like the right word for it. Charge, was as good as I could come up with, give that I had to quickly tug Muggy back into the car to avoid being over run by the wash of office supplies.

Wonders do never cease, I had, on many an occasion seen a living being, inebriated or surprised enough, leave their trousers behind in a rush to desperately not be wherever they happened to be at the time. I had however, never up onto this point seen a pair of trousers, let alone an entire five piece work uniform. Be in such an absolute hurry, as to leave their wearer behind on the way to the destination. The office chairs came next, desks after that, some trash cans clonked along after the motley crew bringing up the rear, lids snapping somewhat maliciously. As to warn passers by, that they really had to be wherever they were going and attempting to dissuade them from going would be highly inadvisable to further use of your limbs.

We clambered out of the car and made it to the station without further harassment by office décor. Which turned out to be a stroke of luck, because upon entering the lobby, we discovered most of the staff had barricaded themselves in one of the offices. To it seemed, avoid being terrorized by the rampaging copier charging around the lobby. In all fairness to the poor thing, if the office Christmas card was any indication. It had, in fact had to copy a lot of butts in its time and I just couldn't find it in me to fault it for wanting to bring that to...If you'll pardon the posterior pun...an end.

Still, I had to do something because once it had become aware of our presence Muggy tripped over the lone umbrella stand still trying to flee the scene, not aiding our attempt at stealth at all. It began thrashing, wildly maneuvering it's bulky form at us. Now, it's no surprise everyone else ended up cowering in an office. Cops don't generally deal well with things that didn't respond to threats or bullets. I, however, am a different sort of cop and also have a different sort of bullet. 

I pulled the BB gun out of the hostler under my jacket and leveled it at the copier. See magic is, well, to be poetic, a magical thing. Magic can give you many amazing abilities and it can explode you into bits if it's feeling temperamental. It is a lot less likely to that, however, if you channel it through something or pack it into something. A great deal of magic is about the prep work. I'm a relatively advanced magical being but if you gave me three minutes and a box of paper clips, about all I'd be able to do was throw paper clips at your problem. I'm a witch, not a twentieth century comic book hero, reality limits us all I suppose.

This was different; I'd enchanted the plastic and metals in the gun and then over enchanted the BB's that went into it, then packed about two dozen clips of the things into my coat. The various colors did various different things, elemental and metaphysical. I leveled what I hoped without any proper color vision was a light blue one. I was fairly sure I'd loaded it with those earlier. The copier seemed to shake and pulse with offense at the gesture, as if it was affronted somehow that I wasn't shriveled with terror. 

The damn thing almost seemed alive, which is weird for something that in no way should be alive. Life is very full of shoulds and woulds however, and this whole situation was hinky as hell. I wasn't very bothered by it, certainly not enough that I couldn't pull the trigger a second later. Just as the big bastard started a revival of its wobbling charge. The BB flew through the air and struck it right in the tray. I watched as crystalline shards of ice burst out of that spot and began to spread over the copier like a bad infection. 

Soon it was engulfed, stuck, stopped in its tracks. It shuddered and shivered; the bloody thing was nearly roaring, pulsing with the sort of bad energy one didn't typically expect from most office gear. I blinked, tucking my gun away as I ventured closer with a sudden and uncharacteristic fear I'd have to trace later. Just as I drew near the thing heaved violently, nearly breaking the nye impenetrable sheet of ice. A spirit angrily burst from beneath the frozen layers. 

It used to be a woman from the looks of it; 'looked like she'd been in a bad accident and all things being what they were, she probably had. The form was twisted, sticking out this way and that, oddly bent and proportioned like a child's drawing. It turned toward me and unleashed a bellowing mighty shriek that would have made the banshee of yore jealous. The sound seemed to go on forever until abruptly, just as it begun, it didn't anymore. The formerly human woman, dearly departed swept out the door in a tornado of crackling magical wake; as if she had remembered out of the blue that she too like the rest of the buildings contents had somewhere deeply pressing to be.

In the half a moment after her sudden appearance but before her mad dash of escape, I admit I fell over in shock. It's not every day that a twisted ghastly tries to shove what's left of its face into all of yours. Except if you're me, and even then I'm not that used to it really. Muggy lurched out from behind the support pillar where he had been hiding. Pillars, I suppose, can neither flee from you nor try to kill you. They can't try to kill you via surprise attack at least. Though I figured, if they got it in their mind to, they could kill you by quitting their own jobs. He reached out a hand and helped pull me off the floor. I grunted, dusting off my coat, though most of the dirt in the station had gone the way of the electric appliance it seemed.


End file.
